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of course she meant no such thing.
    "They're not my children." Then, regret. "Does it matter?" She was worried that she'd made a mistake.
    "It doesn't matter, but it is interesting. I'm sure you'll explain."
    The waiter arrived, bringing croissants, butter, jam, Greek pastry, and coffee. In ordering, she'd covered all the possibilities. "I thought you might like something to eat."
    "Maybe later."
    The tray was set on a table and she tipped the waiter.
    "Two days ago, I arrived at the Turkish border on what used to be called the Orient Express. But we were turned back by a customs officer, so here we are, in Salonika."
    "A Turkish customs officer?" he said. Then made the classic baksheesh gesture, thumb rubbed across the first two fingers, and raised his eyebrows.
    She appreciated the theatre. "Oh, I tried, but I somehow managed to find the only honest official in the Levant."
    "For what reason, Emmi, turned back?"
    "Some question about papers."
    "Are they legitimate?"
    "I thought they were. I was told they were."
    "By ...?"
    "A lawyer in Berlin. I paid him to obtain the right papers, Turkish entry visas, but what I got were--um, cooked up. False papers. That's what the officer said."
    "And then you offered a bribe."
    "I started to but, oh, you should have seen his face. I think he might have put us in prison."
    Sympathetic, Zannis nodded. "Always best, we think here, to avoid time in Turkish prisons. Emmi, if they're not your children, whose are they?"
    "A friend's. An old school friend. A Jewish friend. She can't get out of Germany; she asked for help, I volunteered to take the children out. To Istanbul--where there are people who will take care of them."
    "And where you will live."
    Slowly, she shook her head, then put her cigarette out, pressing the end against the glass. "No, I will go back."
    "Forgive me, I assumed you were Jewish."
    "I am."
    Zannis didn't answer. It was properly hushed on the top floor of the Lux Palace; from the corridor outside the room he could hear the whir of a vacuum cleaner. He stood up, walked over to the window and looked out to sea, at a steamship and its column of smoke against the sky. As he returned to the chair she met his eyes. Stunning, he thought again, and hard, much harder than he'd first thought. What have I stumbled on? Back in the chair, he leaned forward and spoke quietly. "You don't have to say anything, if you don't want to. I'll still help you."
    She nodded, grateful for his understanding. In the bedroom, the boy said, his voice just above a whisper, "Should this be green?"
    "No, blue," the girl said.
    Emilia Krebs bent toward him and lowered her voice. "It was very hard for them. They couldn't go to school, they couldn't really go outdoors--Berlin is brutal now. Do you understand?"
    His expression said that he understood perfectly.
    "So, my friend asked me to get them out, somewhere safe. Because she knew I could go in and out of Germany. Krebs is Colonel Hugo Krebs, my husband, and a very powerful man."
    "In the party?" He meant the Nazi party, and kept his voice light and neutral.
    "Never." She was offended that he could even suggest such a thing, and her voice knew how to be offended. "No, he isn't like that. He's a career officer; he serves on the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, a manager of logistics--trains getting where they're needed on time, enough socks--it's not glamorous, but it is quite important."
    "I know what it is," Zannis said. "Is there a J stamped in your passport?" That was now a legal requirement in Germany, a J for Juden, Jew.
    "Oh no, not mine; they wouldn't dare."
    "No, likely they wouldn't, not with you married to a man in his position, and he's probably not Jewish--he couldn't be, the way things are in Germany."
    "A Lutheran, from a solid old family, though nothing special. We met, we fell in love, and we married--he's a wonderful man. We were never able to have children, but we lived a good life, then Hitler came to power. Hugo would have resigned